The Competition

A Novel

In a horrific scene torn from the headlines, two masked gunmen massacre students and staff at a pep rally in the gym of their suburban L.A. high school. Two bodies found in the library, masks at their sides, are presumably the shooters, who committed mutual suicide. But it's soon apparent that the library scene was staged and the real shooters escaped, having not only exceeded Columbine's body count but also having walked away alive. And this is just the beginning, one of the shooters says in a letter to Deputy DA Rachel Knight (who achieved media prominence in a previous case); this is a competition in mass murder. So Knight and Detective Bailey Keller must work against the clock to find the killers, consulting with psychologists and dealing with parents who deny that their children could be perpetrators. It's a bone-wearying search, undertaken carefully with a future trial in mind, as seemingly good suspects turn out to be dead ends.